boldt, but it has become so much the fashion of late to disbelieve every statement with regard to mines, as emanating from the Stock Exchange, that it may perhaps acquire by confirmation the merit of novelty.
The Biscaina vein had been worked, almost uninterruptedly, from the middle of the sixteenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the two principal mines, (El Xăcāl and La Biscaina,) which, in 1726, had produced 542,700 marcs of silver, (4,341,600 dollars,) were abandoned by their proprietors in consequence of the difficulty of keeping down the water with the very imperfect machinery employed in those early days. The mines were then only one hundred and twenty varas in depth, and the known richness of the ores in the lower levels induced an enterprising individual, Don José Alexandro Bustamante, to denounce them anew, and to attempt the drainage by the Adit of Moran, a part only of which he lived to complete. On his death-bed he bequeathed his hopes, and his works, to Don Pedro Tereros, a small capitalist, who had supplied him with funds to continue his operations, and who, sharing in all Bustamante's anticipations of success, immediately removed to Real del Monte, and devoted his whole remaining fortune to the prosecution of the enterprise. From the smallness of the capital invested, the work advanced but slowly, and was not completed until the year 1762; but in the twelve succeeding years Tereros drew from
